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Sony To 'Open' Playstation
kaphka writes "Sony will be freely licensing its Playstation 2 platform, as well as opening its architecture, according to this TechWeb article. I guess that's one way to deal with the emulators."
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While I would like to live in a world where this might happen, I don't think it can. Sony as a whole has a lot to fear from the "open" way of doing things.
Sure, they *might* be able to do okay with a genuinely "open" gaming platform (although they'd still need to be able to collect a slice of every game sold).
But Sony as a whole has its fingers in so many pies (film, music, etc...) that the "open" world will be one in which they loose. Ultimately, Sony will be backing encrypted-content hardware to protect theit content business arms.
My feeling about this is that they're nervous about M$ targeting their market (wouldn't you be?), and are taking steps to defend themselves.
Fixing copyright
If I am reading things correctly my guess is this a slap in the face for the X-Box. Microsodt is using commodity components to build a good value console, on the other hand Sony is going to sell the chips such they themselves become commodity items.
The integration of PS2 chips into TVs and the like would be quite groovy, however the problem with all this integration is the problem of upgrades.
Perhaps one of the goals of this strategy is to allow people like Creative Labs and the like to produce PC expansion cards that can handle PS2 games, with appropriate restrictions to ensure the games are read from the DVD/CD-ROM drive to ensure "playster" never becomes a reality.
This will almost definitely be hackable, however with the massive market available, my guess is the card might cost £50 (eventually), and this will almost definitely mean that Emulators (especially considering that most of them are Piss Poor) would be defunct.
Anyway, thats my 2p, what do you think?
Actually they are opening the platform up, check out Gameunit or EETimes.
There once was a man named Maloney
His console competed with Sony
But the box never ships
Couldn't make his own chips
"The PlayStation open? Baloney!"
However, it's still a very good sign. Perhaps Sony "gets it"?
www.eFax.com are spammers
I don't think this is about emulation. its more about training future dame developers. sony and other developers have this huge problem that there are very few programmers out there whit experience of console platforms. The amiga used to be a good place to find them, but the amiga is about as dead as Elvis. who programs assembler on the pc? and who has experience programming custom graphic chips?
Ninitendo lets some people hack the N64, and sony used to have Net yarose. so its noting new.
emulation, and copy protection is of course something to be afraid of. but remember that sony doesn't make a profit form selling units, they do it by selling the license to make commercial games for it, so they would gain on some emulation not loose. The only reason they don't like it is because of bad PR, but still no one is going to be able to emulate a ps2 for some years to come.
no one is going to be able to emulate a ps2 for some years to come
Then what's Bochs? Emulates IBM PS/2 computers quite nicely, useful for running older CPU-sensitive games.
Oh, you meant Sony's ps2. That's a different story entirely.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Apple too has been hurt by this. If they'd opened up the Apple to clones around '89, they would own the desktop by now.
More and more in the computer software and hardware industry, open means success. Closed means someone will take a chunk of your market, and there's nothing you can do about it.
On the extreme end of this, I was reading the latest GNOME summary, where I found this tidbit:I found this stunning. Here are three companies that have sprung up from the chaos of open source software developement, but because they are still open to working with other companies, they are litterally able to shift whole projects between them on the fly. This is a radical shift in the evolving landscape of the software business.
Watch this space. I suspect we're going to see some amazing moves that will keep economists and lawyers guessing for decades to come....
I thought it should be pretty evident why Sony's doing this: They want to make it easy to make missile guidance systems out of their Playstations. Did they ever get that Japanese export ban lifted?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Game consoles are sold at a LOSS, and a big one at that. Sony is opening up the hardware for the clones, big deal, noone cares.
Sony and everyone else sells the hardware at a loss because all the money is in the games.
It you wanted to buy the parts and build it yourself (i.e. clone it), it will cost you a few times more then if you just but it at the local story. You might be able to build a system for 3-4x the cost of the Sony subsidized system.
You wont see the game license fees dropping, or the emulators being allowed ever because that's where the money is.
Once again the Slash-blurb is grossly misleading.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
The normal psx controllers will work with the playstation 2, it's just that there won't be any analog buttons on them.
-- Dr. Eldarion --